Taiwan's first new F-16V fighters have arrived, and the delivery tells you how long Washington takes to turn an approved sale into an airframe on Taiwanese soil. Reuters reported the landing this week.

The order dates to 2019, when Washington approved the sale of 66 of the jets. Seven years separate the approval from the first arrival.

That is the real delivery time, and it is the number to hold against any package still to come. If an approved sale takes this long to land, an unapproved one starts its clock later still.

Beijing keeps its own clock. Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense tracked 23 Chinese military aircraft, seven naval vessels and seven official ships around the island between 6 a.m. Wednesday and 6 a.m. Thursday. The official ships are the part of that count that does not appear in a fighter inventory.

The jets will be counted by Taipei as capability. Beijing will count them as a fact it has already priced. China watched the sale move through Washington for seven years and has had that time to plan around it.

US officials now assess that an invasion before 2028 is increasingly unlikely, citing delays from military corruption purges and Beijing's preferences. That assessment lets Washington treat further arms decisions as something that can wait. The F-16V delivery shows what waiting costs.

If the read is right, any capability Taipei needs by 2027 that Washington has not yet approved will not arrive in time.